You might also notice that none of that is actual product development and it will not lead to a product anytime soon (and as far as I know the Netflix Challenge

You might also notice that none of that is actual product development and it will not lead to a product anytime soon (and as far as I know the Netflix Challenge results were not used by Netflix). That‘s research. It‘s great if you‘re working at a research department or maybe you do it for fun after work. But how is this related, exactly, to the software industry? The point was that actual software engineering has not been more or less trivial than a few decades ago and that the glue isn‘t that much after all. There was never a time when the daily work of software engineers was, in fact, research. There are plenty of research institutes and universities and even research labs of software companies where you can do this after you‘ve got your degree. Just go there, many of my friends are doing exactly that.